“What do you want me to do?” Hector asked.
“Phone the Star Watch Commander—”
“My commanding officer, all the way back at Alpha Perseus VI? That’s a hundred light-years from here.”
“No, no, no.” Leoh shook his head. “The Commander-in-Chief, Sir Harold Spencer. At Star Watch Central Headquarters. That’s several hundred parsecs from here. But get through to him as quickly as possible.”
With a low whistle of astonishment, Hector began punching buttons on the phone switch.
XIV
The morning of the duel arrived, and precisely at the agreed-upon hour, Odal and a small retinue of Kerak representatives stepped through the double doors of the dueling machine chamber.
Hector and Leoh were already there, waiting. With them stood another man, dressed in the black-and-silver of the Star Watch. He was a blocky, broad-faced veteran with iron-gray hair and hard, unsmiling eyes.
The two little groups of men knotted together in the center of the room, before the machine’s control board. The white-uniformed staff meditechs emerged from a far doorway and stood off to one side.
Odal went through the formality of shaking hands with Hector. The Kerak major nodded toward the other Watchman. “Your replacement?” he asked mischievously.